


Old Familiar Places

by deanniker



Series: Iron Maiden Joe AU [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Healthy Communication, M/M, Team as Family, iron maiden joe, working through the issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27343540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanniker/pseuds/deanniker
Summary: “We could dance like lovers now, out on the street?”“Not everywhere,” Nicky said. Joe stretched his hand out over the space between their beds, and Nicky took it and laced their fingers together. “Cities are safer, but there is still danger.”Joe sighed. Nicky had rubbed his thumb over Joe’s knuckles and wished that Joe had not suffered for so long only to be reborn into a world that was still steeped in prejudice, in the same intolerance and hatred that caused all his pain. “I would like to dance with you like that one day,” Joe told him, and Nicky had to press a kiss to their tangled fingers.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Iron Maiden Joe AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996552
Comments: 56
Kudos: 447





	Old Familiar Places

**Author's Note:**

> Did I say the epilogue would be a long time coming? Yep. Should I be focusing on my Big Bang, the thing with actual deadlines? Absolutely. Am I here anyway? Well, yes. 
> 
> This is a direct follow up to Crawl Home, and it will probably not make much sense if you don't read that one first, so do what that information what you will.

Joe wants to dance. They had gone out to dinner with everyone to celebrate Nile’s completion of her third year of college, and on the way back they ran into a pop-up concert in the park. Quỳnh had pulled Nile into the crowd to dance for a few songs, and when they finally reappeared they were flushed and laughing, and Andy let herself be pulled down into a chaste kiss, right there on the sidewalk. Joe didn’t say anything then, but that night he turned over and said, “We could dance like lovers now, out on the street?”

“Not everywhere,” Nicky said. Joe stretched his hand out over the space between their beds, and Nicky took it and laced their fingers together. “Cities are safer, but there is still danger.”

Joe sighed. Nicky had rubbed his thumb over Joe’s knuckles and wished that Joe had not suffered for so long only to be reborn into a world that was still steeped in prejudice, in the same intolerance and hatred that caused all his pain. “I would like to dance with you like that one day,” Joe told him, and Nicky had to press a kiss to their tangled fingers. 

Even though Joe is still cautious of extending himself in public, that they have not been dancing in private is a travesty that must be immediately corrected, which brings them to now, shoving Nicky’s bed against Joe’s for the extra foot and a half of space that will get them. 

“Alright, what now,” Joe says, shutting the door and stepping in close to him. Nicky swallows hard, unable to speak, and reaches out to feel the ruffle of Joe’s beard beneath his fingers. “Ah,” Joe says. “You have wanted this.”

Nicky nods. “Very much,” he tries to say, but it comes out as a whisper. “So many times, I… I missed you so badly.”

“You can ask me for things too, you know,” Joe says, nuzzling into Nicky’s hand.

“I forget,” Nicky tells him. “You’re here with me, and I am so happy. I forget to think there might be more.”

Joe takes his hand away from his face and kisses the back of it. “Try to remember,” he says.

Nicky nods, pulling his phone out and scrolling through until he finds something that should work. He puts his phone on the dresser and takes Joe’s hand, placing his other hand on Joe’s waist. Joe puts his hand on Nicky’s shoulder - and then they’re dancing. 

It’s just a simple back and forth motion, turning in a gradual circle. A waltz, or something close to it. They’ve done this kind of thing before, in rented rooms to thin strains of music wafting in from the streets, around a fire with Andromache and Quỳnh clapping their hands to keep time. 

Nicky picked swing on purpose, to ground them in modern times as much as possible, and because it is fun to dance to, easy to lose yourself in the beat. 

The next song is faster, and Joe laughs when Nicky starts to get playful with it, guiding them away from the waltz and into the jerkier, freer movements of swing. Their circles grow larger, and they step on each other’s feet. Nicky’s hip clips the dresser, and he hisses at the bright flash of pain that that brings, but he can’t stop smiling, can’t stop grinning at Joe like the love-drunk fool he is. Joe grins back at him, and runs his hand over Nicky’s hip, where a bruise would form if they were able to bruise.

They pass a few more songs that way, Nicky trying to imitate what he has seen in dance halls, and Joe trying to imitate him. They’re probably terrible - Nicky can’t be bothered to care. Eventually the song is replaced with a slower one. It still has a beat, but Joe pulls him a little closer, and they simply sway in place. 

“You don’t want to dance anymore?” Nicky asks. 

“No. I want to…” Joe waggles his eyebrows. “Make out.”

Nicky snorts, a little. 

“Would you like that?”

Nicky smiles at him helplessly. “I thought you were too clever a man to ask questions you already know the answers to?”

Joe smiles and leans in. 

Joe likes to say  _ making out _ because it is silly and modern and playful. They’d asked Nile where the term had come from, and she’d thought about it and said she didn’t know, and then they’d watched her start to wonder why they were asking and began to be caught between looking uncomfortable and being happy for them. In actuality, the kisses they share are always soft and gentle, like the first explorations from all those centuries ago, when they began taking the tentative steps away from friendship toward something more. 

Nicky is sure that Joe could bear passionate kisses, could bear Nicky’s roaming, covetous, greedy hands - but Nicky could not bear to be pushed away, however slim that possibility might be. Their attempts to share a bed has proven how weak he still is - sometimes, when Joe flails and shoves him away in the middle of the night Nicky handles it by pulling their beds back apart and falling back to sleep, and sometimes he handles it by retreating into the bathroom and weeping until morning. For now, they have slow, chaste kisses, and careful hands; they could share only this until the end of time and Nicky would have no complaints. 

Eventually, he does stop, because the slow song that begins playing is not something he can kiss Joe through. 

“Something wrong?” 

Nicky shakes his head. “Just this song,” he says. “It makes me sad.”

Joe listens. It’s an old sad song about lost love - there have been many over the years, and Nicky never became immune to them, though this one in particular struck him very deeply. The first time Nicky had heard it crackling over the radio on one of his many sleepless nights, it had sent him stumbling out into the streets. He’d smashed the windows of every record store in the area until he found it, and brought it back and played it and sobbed and lashed out when they tried to get him to stop until Andy shut the power off in their apartment by shorting out the fuse. It had scared Booker quite badly. “Do you want to…” Joe asks. 

“No,” Nicky says, leaning into him. “Let it play.”

When it switches to a new song far too upbeat to suit the mood, Joe is the one to reach out and shut it off. 

“Come here,” Nicky says, and cradles Joe’s face between his palms, the most precious thing that has ever been. When they were born, Nicky could not conceive of a world the size of this one, and when he was granted immortality he thought it was his chance to see every city on earth. His world had been small; the stars were just lights in the sky. Now Nicky knows that every twinkle is capable of sustaining life, that even he would not have time to visit them all, if such a thing were possible. But now he has no interest. He knows there is nothing that could compare to Joe.

Joe would be able to say all that and more. But Nicky mangles everything but the simplest of statements, and he only manages: “You are irreplaceable.”

Joe kisses him, like he doesn’t mind that Nicky can’t string together the words that he deserves. “Nicky…” he says, against his lips. “I have been thinking…” 

“Yes?” Nicky prompts, when Joe seems to stall. 

“I want to go back with you to Malta.”

Nicky draws back, to look at him properly. Joe is looking at him earnestly with a furrow in his brow that suggests he has been wanting to say this for a long time - this is not some passing fancy brought on in an emotional moment. Nicky couldn’t deny that he hasn’t longed for that too, but… an island, in the middle of the sea. The smell of salt air, the sound of the waves. Nearly all their happy memories from there involve the water somehow. 

“Nicky?” Joe asks. “What do you think?”

“Nothing would make me happier, but I think you and I both know that it will take a great deal of difficult work, to get to a place where that would not be painful,” Nicky tells him honestly. “And that most of the difficulty would be for you.”

Joe nods. “I know.”

“Do you have a plan?” Nicky asks. 

“I thought, Booker and I could go to the Santa Monica pier,” Joe says. ‘And maybe… an aquarium. I have been - I have been watching videos.”

Nicky’s stomach turns over. Joe, surrounded by water, bathed in dark blue light. “Please, no,” he begs. “Not an aquarium. Not right away.”

“Alright,” Joe says. He brings their hands up to his lips. “Not right away.”

Nicky frowns, horrible suspicion starting to creep across his shoulders. “How long have you been watching videos?” He asks. 

Joe winces. “Three weeks.”

Nicky steps away from him. Three weeks - Joe has had far more nightmares in that time. Last week alone he had four. Nicky had not understood why. 

“Nicky,” Joe pleads, reaching out, but Nicky shies away. “Nicky, I didn’t mean to -”

“Clearly, for three weeks,” Nicky says. 

“I don’t need your approval for everything I do.”

Nicky looks away. “That is true,” he admits. Still, it stings, that Joe did not - that he did not even let Nicky know he was trying something that might be difficult. Even if he did not want to tell him the specifics.

Joe reaches out again, and Nicky keeps distance between them but lets Joe take his hand. “I want to know what you will need from me,” Nicky tells him. “I want to be prepared. And I cannot do that if you don’t talk to me.”

“Sometimes,” Joe begins slowly. “I do not want to have to talk to you. I want to imagine that things will be easy.”

Nicky cannot blame him for that, not when he spent nearly four hundred years indulging in such a foolish fantasy. He sighs, and turns back to him. “When were you thinking about going to the pier?” 

“Tuesday.”

Four days. Four days and three nights until Joe attempts something that is sure to hurt him. Nicky squeezes his hand. “For now, no more videos?” He asks. “Just - for a few days. I want to sleep with you again, before.”

Joe squeezes back. “Okay.”

That night their beds stay separated. Nicky doesn’t get much sleep - he curls up on his side and stares across the distance at Joe’s face, relaxed in sleep. The slow rise and fall of his chest. Nicky wants to shake him awake, tell him that they don’t need more than this. That Joe doesn’t need to push himself. It hasn’t even been five years. Joe knows that, though, so Nicky stays silent and listens to each breath.

The next night, they push the beds together, and Joe maneuvers them to curl up facing into each other, heads close enough that Joe’s face is the only thing Nicky can see, knees knocking together. They hold hands in the space between their bodies, and it’s still such a shock that they can be like this, even if it’s only for one night, or a handful of hours, that Nicky turns his face into the pillow, overwhelmed. 

“I picked this because I wanted to see your face,” Joe says, amused but understanding.

“How can you expect me to sleep like this?” Nicky asks, words muffled by the pillow. “You think I will be able to close my eyes, with you so near?”

Joe chuckles, and Nicky can feel it through the mattress. If it were possible to die of love Nicky would have already done so a thousand times over, but still, sometimes, he wonders.

He does not expire, so he turns his head back up to face Joe. “Are you worried about what will happen on Tuesday?” he asks, because however much Joe might like to look at him, this has always been the way they have had difficult conversations. 

“Yes and no,” Joe says. “I will be able to handle it, or I will not. I don’t know if there is a way for me to tell ahead of time, which it will be.”

“You do not have to know,” Nicky tells him. “None of us expect that of you.”

“ _I_ want to know. I want to be able to tell you that tonight, I will not have a nightmare that makes me lash out at you. I want to tell you that I will never have to ask you to leave my bed. That, when we go to Malta, there will be absolutely nothing to worry about. That one day this will all just stop.”

Nicky squeezes his hands. “We’ve talked about this already, my love,” he says. “But if you need to hear it again - there is nothing about the way you are now, or what the two of us have, that needs to stop, or change, to make me love you more. The same is true for all our family.”

“You say that as though, not five minutes ago, you nearly tore apart the pillow with your teeth to keep me from seeing how much you were affected by this extremely polite sleeping arrangement,” Joe says, but his tone is wry, and Nicky knows some of what he was saying was heard.

“There is no use in denying that we do not wish for more,” Nicky says, and considers Joe’s resigned smile, and what will be the proper phrasing. “It would be pleasant to have you beneath me and at my mercy again, for instance.”

Joe sucks in a startled breath, his eyes widening, and then he relaxes and sends Nicky a sly smile. “It would?”

Nicky shrugs, as though he couldn’t be bothered either way, but no doubt his grin ruins the effect. “I would not be averse to seeing that.”

Joe hums, and closes the distance he needs to to kiss Nicky, keeping it slow but a little deeper and dirtier than normal, and for a moment NIcky wonders whether Joe will ask him to turn on the light so they can try… something. But Joe draws back after a few minutes, which is probably for the best, with so many things in flux. 

“We’ll be alright,” Nicky tells him.

Nicky does get kicked in the thigh in the middle of the night. Joe takes a few shuddering breaths, and when Nicky clears his throat, Joe says, “yeah, I think we’d better…” so Nicky pulls their beds back apart and falls back asleep. 

The next night Joe sleeps with his head on Nicky’s shoulder, and it’s all fine until they’re woken by a knock on their door at three in the morning. Nicky extricates himself and opens it to reveal Nile, eyes red. “Nicky, hey, can I...” she says, but bites her lip when she looks past him and sees the way they were sleeping. “You know what, it’s fine,” she says. “You guys get back to sleep.”

Nicky steps out and leads her towards the kitchen, “Hot chocolate,” he says. “And tell me.”

“It’s fine, really,” Nile protests. “It’s not important.”

“Nile,” Nicky says, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You are my family, just as much as Joe. Just as important. Now tell me, is it your brother?”

Nile nods. Her brother is younger than her, but as of this year, in a sense, older. Nile had been quietly shocked when it happened, when his twenty-seventh birthday came a few months ago. She’d spent a lot of time staring at her face in the mirror, having difficult conversations with Booker, and it seemed as though she’d pushed past it. But now that she’s not as busy with schoolwork and has more time to dwell, he might have expected something like this to happen.

Nicky didn’t have such an experience, but Nile knows that already, so she’s here for a listening ear and perhaps, a literal shoulder to cry on, so he doesn’t bother pointing that out. He simply makes her a hot chocolate and asks her questions about Aaron, tries to prompt her for stories about their childhood that will make her smile. 

It works, to a certain extent. She tells some stories and smiles some watery smiles and asks for a hug. When she falls asleep against him he carries her back to her room. 

Booker’s awake, his head in his hands. He doesn’t look at Nicky at all - Nicky knows he must be feeling guilty, about how his plan with Copley forced her to act in a way that took away her choice. 

Joe stirs when he gets into bed. “Was that Nile?” he asks, sliding an arm across Nicky’s stomach. 

“Yes,” Nicky says. 

“We should do something with her,” Joe mumbles. “Something fun.”

Nicky presses a kiss into Joe’s hair. “Yes, we should.”

***

Booker texts him when they’re headed back.  **Handled it okay, quiet but he seems alright**

**Thank you** Nicky texts back. He looks at the items laid out on the dresser. Bike helmets, sketchbook, yarn, books, a recipe for croquembouche. Things for Joe to point to if he doesn’t want to talk. Nicky nods. He’s ready, or something like it.

“How was it?” Quỳnh asks, when they come in. 

“The merry go round was very silly,” Joe says. “And the games were all rigged.”

They’re all standing around in the living room, not bothering to pretend that they’re doing anything other than waiting for him to come back. Joe touches Andy and Quỳnh’s shoulders gently, murmurs something to Nile that makes her smile, before crossing the room to stand in front of Nicky. His hair is a littler frizzier than normal. He looks tired and he smells like grease and sweat, and very faintly, like the sea. “I want to shower,” he says, and takes Nicky’s hand. 

He tows Nicky into the bathroom with him, and gestures at the toilet. Nicky sits and stares at the blurred outline of him through the shower door, and clenches his fists and digs his nails into his palms. 

“You astound me,” Nicky says, when Joe steps out of the shower. He had not planned on speaking until Joe asked him too, but he can’t keep it in. “I cannot wrap my head around you.”

Joe pauses in towelling himself off. He frowns. “You understand me.”

“I do not,” Nicky insists. “I could never. It’s - you’re so -” he spreads his hands, making a grasping gesture. “The whole of you is -” 

The sentiment he was trying to articulate is flying away from him, and he huffs in frustration. Joe pats him on the shoulder and pulls him into their room. 

Joe taps the yarn and takes a seat on the couch that they jammed into the corner this morning, so Nicky grabs his crochet supplies and spreads the blanket he’s working on over both of their laps. Joe curls up next to him, to get a good look at his hands. “Let me know if you want to talk,” Nicky says quietly, and gets to work. 

Nicky didn’t learn to crochet until after he lost Joe so Joe doesn’t really know how it works, though he’s watched Nicky’s hands for long enough now that he could probably make a decent first attempt. He likes watching the patterns form, likes to thread his fingers through the holes and catalogue the different textures. 

“It was easier than I expected,” Joe says, nearly an hour later, after Nicky has made significant progress. “I think I am more tired from worrying that something would happen than from anything else.”

“That’s good,” Nicky says.

“Mmm,” Joe nods. “The smell was the worst, I think. I suppose that makes sense. There wasn’t much to hear. Or see. I was only on the surface for a short time, and that was at the end.”

Nicky swallows hard and forces himself to focus on the hook in his hands. “That does make sense, yes.”

“I’ll need to go back,” Joe says. “A few more times with Nile and Booker, I think, before I try anything else.”

“Very wise,” Nicky says. He works a few more stitches, before setting his things down. “However much I hate it, the aquarium is a good idea. But we will also need to get you into the water again. I don’t think the first time should be in the Pacific. Perhaps a hot bath, when you are ready? And we can work our way cooler and larger from there.”

Joe nods into his shoulder. “That’s a good idea. Thank you.”

Nicky looks down at him. “What for?” he asks. 

“For helping me with this, however much you hate it.”

Nicky picks up the hook again. “If I could, I would drag you into the middle of the Sahara and never let you back out, but the desert is very boring.”

Joe chuckles, and threads his fingers through the gaps on the blanket again. “Do you know, that doesn’t sound so bad. You and me, alone under the stars. We would find some way to keep ourselves entertained.”

“We would,” Nicky agrees, and remembers Joe saying,  _ you can ask me for things too.  _ “Come away with me,” he blurts. 

Joe tilts his head up to look at him. 

“Let’s take a trip,” Nicky says. “Just the two of us. Death Valley is close, we can go camping.”

“What, now?”

“Why not now?”

“Well, if we try to share a bed so soon after today I’ll probably just end up kicking you in the balls,” Joe points out.

“So kick me in the balls,” Nicky says. “We can bring music and build a fire and dance around it, out under the sky. I’ll be so caught up looking at you and the way you glow in the firelight that I’ll burn the food, and you’ll tease me for knowing it would happen and letting it anyway, and I’ll kiss you, and try again to tell you how much I love you, and we’ll go to sleep and you’ll kick me in the balls, and the next day we’ll wake up and we’ll get to do it all over again.”

“Nicky,” Joe says, and his eyes are shining. “That sounds  _ perfect.” _

Nicky kisses him, sloppy and uncoordinated, because he’s shaking a little, because he knows that Joe doesn’t mean  _ perfect _ , but means  _ them.  _ It’ll be messy and imperfect and  _ them _ . “Is that a yes?” he asks. 

“How long does it take to get there?” Joe asks. 

“I have no idea,” Nicky says. 

Joe grins. “Then I guess we’d better get going.”

Joe shouts the house down as they dart in and out of rooms, grabbing things that they’ll need or want. They steal Booker’s boombox and Joe snatches up one of Nile’s wide brimmed sun hats, presenting it to Nicky with a flourish. “I will not need the sun's assistance to pink your cheeks, I think,” he says with a wink and a grin, before he backs Nicky into the wall and kisses him thoroughly. It might just be a flirtation, not a real promise, but Nicky giggles against his lips anyway, and reaches down with his free hand to appreciate Joe’s ass. 

“Oh, ew,” Nile says, at the same time that Booker says, “we have to sleep here, guys, please save it.”

Andy appears in the doorway, drawn by the ruckus, takes one look at them, and points a banishing finger towards the door, “Out.”

Quỳnh gives them a thumbs up on their way out, while Nile groans. “My  _ eyes _ . _ ”  _

Joe drives with the windows rolled down and holding Nicky’s hand over the console. “This is very foolish,” he says, laughing.

“Oh, yes,” Nicky says, grinning at him. “We’ll have to sleep on the side of the road.”

“We’ve dealt with worse.”

“And we will again.”

Joe squeezes his hand, grinning. This carefree, wonderful, buoyant mood will run its course eventually, and they’ll have to go back to being careful with each other, and the challenges will be difficult to navigate. But not everything has to be painful. They can have times like this. 

“Love you,” Joe says. 

“And I love you,” Nicky says, squeezing his hand. 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! I can't help but put them through the emotional wringer. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://deanniker-wastingtime.tumblr.com/) losing control of my life, if that's something you're into.


End file.
